Apple Mac OS X El Capitan Available As Free Download September 30th

Apple announced a handful of products yesterday, including a new iPhone, a 12.9-inch iPad Pro that's better suited for productivity than its other iPad tablets, and a refreshed Apple TV set-top box. However, there's one thing that kind of flew under the radar, and that's the impending release of Mac OS X 10.11, otherwise known as El Capitan.

The successor to OS X Yosemite was officially unveiled earlier this summer with a developer preview made available to Mac Developer Program members. At the time, Apple said the OS would release sometime "this fall," but didn't offer up a specific date. Now we have one.

Apple slyly tipped September 30, 2015 as El Capitan's release date while previewing an email during one of its demos yesterday. It was a brief appearance and one that Apple didn't make any effort to point out -- either you caught it or you didn't.

An update to El Capitan's Preview webpage on Apple's website confirms that OS X 10.11 is "coming September 30," which is just shy of three weeks from now. In other words, it's official despite there not being an announcement. There's also a GM (gold master) release of the forthcoming OS that's making it's way to registered developers and customers who have been previewing El Capitan.

Apple previously stated that El Capitan will roll out as a free update in the Mac App Store. It won't be an overhaul of OS X, but an update that focuses on "refinements to the Mac Experience" and "improvements to system performance."